In the second of a two part series on zombies, this week we go deeper in the dark world of the undead. In part one we managed, through a combination of drugs, to create zombie-like creatures who were sluggish and largely brain-dead. This week we have a shot at recreating the zombies of films such as I am Legend - creatures created through the transmission of a virus, who are filled with rage and enjoy the taste of brains. Topics covered include:
Mad cow disease and the use of prions to transmit disease,
Chimpanzees who eat brains,
Methamphetamines for the creation of rage,
Mathematical modelling a zombie pandemic and how the zombies could do this sustainably.
Somehow we ended up proposing a "Planet of the zombie apes" movie idea, and a methamphetamine-infused biodome. It might not pass an ethics committee. Tune in to this episode here.
Zombies have been fodder for science fiction books and movies for years, but could we actually create one in the lab? And why indeed would you want to do this? Surely the whole "eating brains" concept would mean that making one is probably not in your best interests.
This week on the podcast, Dr Boob takes us on a journey through zombie science fiction, Haitian zombies and zombie-style animals in nature, including a fascinating scenario where ants are hijacked by a fungus. This episode is part 1 - next time we will tackle, among other things, brain parasites, eating brains (cultural, cooking and animals that do
it), mad cow disease, the 'zombie' bath salts attacks (face eating), and
a mathematical model of a zombie pandemic.
We have looked at zombies in the past. In the post Correlation of the Week: Zombies, Vampires, Democrats and Republicans we looked at how the political party of the US presidency seems to influence the style of science fiction movie made during their presidency. A recent upsurge in zombie films could augur well for the Republicans next time round, although there are still plenty of vampire films and TV shows around.
Time travel is one of the more interesting plot devices in scifi movies. In this episode and the second in the series, Dr Boob takes us on a journey through parallel universes, causal loops and the nature of time-lines. We look at Back to the Future, the Terminator series, Futurama, Looper, Red Dwarf and Twelve Monkeys. By the end, it got a bit deep and my brain hurt! There are a few spoilers in this episode, if somehow you haven't seen these classic time travel movies. And please excuse my cold!
This week we're inhabiting the nexus of science, pop culture and science fiction. The topic of discussion is Time Travel and how it is portrayed in the movies. There's a little bit of philosophy, a little bit of physics, a dash of the paranormal, and a lot of Dr Boob, who is once again the driving force of this podcast!
If you are interested in Andrew Basiago and Project Pegasus, which is mentioned in this show, you can find more here. If you want to organise your own time traveller convention, or if you can think of a good experiment that BOOB could stand for, let us know.
This is part one of a two part series on time travel and the movies - part two will be out shortly.
Tune in to this episode here.
Did you get up at 5am and brave the cold to see the planets align? If you had, you would have seen something like this. Venus and Jupiter were very bright, Mercury was fainter and eventually fell behind some clouds, and I couldn't see Mars at all with the naked eye. It was only with this long exposure shot that I could see what I think to be Mars. I've put up a bunch of photos on flickr.
The reason we were treated to this early morning light show was because of a rare alignment of the planets. It's not rare due to being unexpected - it's completely predictable - it just doesn't happen all that often. The next time these four planets will get together will be in 2056.
The following images have been made using the excellent Solar System Live by John Walker. The site shows the positions of the planets around the Sun, and in the sky, either live or at a time of your choosing. On May 13, the four inner planets were all in a straight line and from Earth you could view the other three clumped together in the sky. The images show the solar system from above, with the orbits spaced equally for ease of viewing. From this viewpoint, the Earth spins counter-clockwise on its axis, and counter-clockwise around the Sun. The alignment of planets is not seen until just before dawn, however as the Earth continues to rotate and the Sun comes into view, the light from the Sun becomes too strong to see the planets (you rarely see stars or planets during the day). Unseen, they continue to track overhead during the day. By the end of May, as the various planets move at different orbital speeds around the Sun (a year is different on each planet), they will be in different parts of the sky and the light show over.
If you take a closer look at the figure below, you'll notice that besides the aligned planets, there are actually six planets visible in the dawn sky - all planets except Saturn can be spotted if you find a dark enough area, although you'll need binoculars to see Uranus and Neptune. Even Pluto, if you still maintain it to be a planet, might be found with a small telescope - the Solar System live site still has Pluto in its diagrams. A crescent Moon will reappear near the end of May to add to the scenery.
For more information, this video from ScienceCasts gives a great overview of the phenomenon, showing how the planets move in the sky throughout May. It's also a geometry lesson before breakfast. Check out science.nasa.gov for more.
Astrology
The alignment of the planets has various meanings in astrology and some astrologists maintain that there is science behind their beliefs, often claiming the precise positioning of the planets and stars at your birth effects you through gravity. Whilst these effects may be small, some claim they're enough to influence your developing brain and therefore your personality. Let's test the theory. To find out the gravitational force between two masses, we use Newton's law of universal gravitation:
We can use this to examine the gravitational force between a one kilogram mass on the surface of the Earth and the distant planets. The distances the planets were from Earth on May 13 were obtained from Solar System Live, and their masses from NASA. I've also included the gravitational effect of my car if you were standing 50 cm from it.
As you can see, the gravitational effect of my 1.5 tonne car is greater than all the planets put together.
It is also important to note that on May 13, the pull of the Moon on our 1kg object was 199 times bigger than that of Jupiter's at the Earth's surface. The Sun's pull was 178 times bigger than the Moon's, and the pull of the Earth itself was 1656 times bigger than the Sun's. Essentially, the pull of the planets on an object at the Earth's surface is negligible. The calculations can be explored in this spreadsheet. Read more over at Bad Astronomy debunking the claims of astronomy, especially with regards to gravity and the tides.
So, don't blame Jupiter if luck doesn't favour you this month - blame my car. Oh Marc, that is such a Taurian thing to say...
And we're back! It's been a while, but finally it's time for another podcast, so we've made it a long one. Take this episode on a long train ride or car trip, as Dr Boob and I explore the science of the spells of Harry Potter.
Attempting to find scientific and engineering solutions to Harry Potter spells is probably the most difficult task we have set ourselves yet, so we would be very interested to hear how you would made the Harry Potter spells a reality. The spells dealt with in this episode are:
Lumos - Producing light from the end of a wand (A voice activated torch seems a logical solution),
Aguamenti - Shooting water from the end of the wand,
Although some of these are quite clearly impossible at the moment, in every case we have come up with a scientific or engineering solution to take us at least part of the way there. Listen in to find out what we came up with, and please write in and let us know where we have gone wrong or what you would do.
Santos, V., Paula, W., & Kalapothakis, E. (2009). Influence of the luminol chemiluminescence reaction on the confirmatory tests for the detection and characterization of bloodstains in forensic analysis Forensic Science International: Genetics Supplement Series, 2 (1), 196-197 DOI: 10.1016/j.fsigss.2009.09.008
A.J. Barnier and D.A. Oakley (2009). Hypnosis and Suggestion Encyclopedia of Consciousness DOI: 10.1016/B978-012373873-8.00038-4
This is the second part of our series on the science of Wolverine - specifically, how can we create Wolverine in the lab? Join Dr Boob and myself as we journey through Wolverine's characteristics and how they may be recreated in a human. Read more on Wolverine in part 1 of this series. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):
Specifically in this episode, we tackle the topics of:
What would happen to your bones if you completely covered them with metal? Bones are living parts of your body and make red blood cells, platelets and bone marrow - among other things - that are vital for life.
Would a lack of platelets reduce Wolverine's ability to heal?
Wolverine is likely to be on a cocktail of drugs, including anabolic steroids to beef him up, immunosuppressants so his body doesn't reject the metal coating on his bones, and various drugs to supply red blood cells, bone marrow and platelets.
Could we really harness the healing powers of the sea cucumber for Wolverine, and would they work quickly enough?
Are carrots enough to improve his sight?
What metal could we use to coat his bones? It needs to be able to be injected as a liquid and then harden at body temperature. Most steels have melting points over 1000 degrees Celcius, and this would cause terrible trauma to his body. Dr Boob's suggestion was CerroLOW117, which is 44.7% Bismuth, 22.6% Lead, 8.3% Tin, 5.3% Cadmium and 19.1% Indium. CerroLOW117 has a melting point of 47 degrees Celcius, however lead and cadmium both accumulate in the body and have adverse health effects. It is highly likely CerroLOW117 would not be strong enough to help Wolverine anyway.
Wolverine is probably the best known of the X-Men. Commonly known as Logan, Wolverine is a mutant who has animal-keen senses, super bodily strength, retracting claws, and the ability to almost instantly heal himself from injury. And thanks to some evil scientists, he has the near indestructible (and fictional) metal alloy adamantium fused to his bones, meaning that his claws and skeleton are almost unbreakable.
In the second episode of our regular series on the science of superheroes, biochemist Dr Chris Pettigrew (aka Dr Boob) and I discuss where in nature Wolverine's powers can be found, and how we might scientifically create Wolverine in the lab. This is the first of a 2-part show on Wolverine - see below for a brief description of some of the science discussed. Our first superheroes episode was on the science of Wolverine's fellow X-man, and sometime love interest, Mystique.
To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):
The name Wolverine comes from the Wolverine animal, which lives in isolated northern areas such as the arctic and alpine regions of Alaska. It is a stocky and strong animal that is very strong for its size and has been known to kill prey as large as moose. The wolverine is not actually a bear or a dog, but rather a mustelid, or in common parlance, a weasel.
While many of Wolverine's powers (such as strength and hearing) could come from its namesake mustelid, if we were to attempt to create Wolverine in the lab, we must first turn to the ocean:
Healing ability:
Sea Cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth. All animals possess some kind of tissue repair mechanism, however the sea cucumber belongs to a group of animals that can regrow lost limbs - salamandas and some starfish also have this ability. The repair process involves cells called morula cells, which move to the point of injury. Although all animals have wound repair processes, not all can regenerate lost body parts. With the sea cucumber, the same processes that repair its injuries also repair limbs and internal organs, and this opens up the possibility that we could one day discover how to repair our own wounds and perhaps how to regenerate body parts. But as Dr Boob says, we are quite some way off from instant healing ability: "The odd bullet to the head won't be able to be dealt with."
Retractable Claws:
There is a remarkable analogue found in nature for Wolverine's retractable claws. University of Harvard biologists have determined that some African frogs have the ability to puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes. These bones then act as claws to attack predators. The defence mechanism was discovered by David C. Blackburn, James Hanken, and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. Blackburn said, "It's surprising enough to find a frog with claws. The fact that those claws work by cutting through the skin of the frogs' feet is even more astonishing. These are the only vertebrate claws known to pierce their way to functionality."
Blackburn discovered the frog and its defences when he was conducting fieldwork in Cameroon and one frog he was studying scratched him. He found 11 frog species in the genera Astylosternus, Trichobatracus and Scotobleps who had this peculiar ability. Read more at Project Frog.
Smell, sight, hearing
Whilst there are obvious candidates in nature that have heightened sight, smell and hearing abilities, recent studies suggest that human and dog olfactory receptor genes evolved from a common mammalian ancestor, and as such Dr Boob thinks that mimicking the smelling ability of dogs could be quite "easy." Dogs have an olfactory sense approximately a hundred thousand to a million times more acute than a human's. Scenthounds can smell one- to ten-million times more acutely than a human, and Bloodhounds, ten- to one-hundred-million times more.
To hear more on the science of Wolverine, tune in here (or press play below):
Part 2 of this series on the science of Wolverine will be aired over the next few weeks. The song A Russian Peter was used in the background of this podcast, with permission from Ioda Promonet. Buy the full London Philharmonic OrchestraPeter and the Wolf CD, or download individual songs as mp3s, from Amazon here.
The Beer Drinking Scientists are back! It's been two and a half years since our last episode, but Darren Osborne, editor of ABC Science Online, and I have got back together over a beer in Sydney to chat about the pressing scientific issues of the day - in this case, alien life. We chat about the latest scientific research and discoveries in areas such as astrobiology, SETI and exoplanets, and also to others in pub to hear their opinions.
In this episode, you can hear the vox pop from the BDS episode - including from one person who swears she has seen not only one UFO, but a UFO release a baby-craft, and another who thinks that Jesus might be an alien...
We'd love to hear ideas for future BDS episodes, so feel free to leave comments, or let us know on twitter - @bdscientists. We'll release new shows about every 2 months.
Tune in to the podcast here (or press play below):
Astrobiology is a fascinating and complex field of science. It is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe, and is a relatively new field of science incorporating astronomy, biology, geology, palaeontology, physics, mathematics and other disciplines. It is even more fascinating given that we have never actually discovered life anywhere else in the universe!
Dr Carol Oliver is a science communication researcher working for the Australian Centre for Astrobioligy, whose key goals include contributing to the understanding of the orgin of life on Earth and to set an Australian life-seeking instrument on the surface of Mars.
We covered a number of topics in our chat including:
How does SETI actually look for extraterrestrial life?
SETI searches for electromagnetic signals from civilizations elsewhere in the universe - but where should they look? It turns out there is a handy hole in the electromagnetic spectrum coined The Water Hole - a band of radio frequencies between 1420 MHz and 1640 MHz. This is the band between the hydrogen line and the strongest hydroxylspectral line, and is a very quiet region - there is little radio noise from space between these frequencies. It is theorised that alien communications could be found in this range because of its quietness and also because the combination of hydrogen and hydroxyl yields water, something considered vital for life. It is therefore a likely place for other life, which needs water to survive, to try and communicate.
The Fermi Paradox - The Fermi paradox asks the question, if there are other civilisations in the universe, why haven't we seen any evidence of their presence?
Where is the best candidate for life in our Solar System? Is it Mars (more likely for microbial life) or perhaps a moon of Jupiter, like Europa? Was there life on Mars at any stage of its history?
The concept of panspermia - that life on Earth may have originated elsewhere in the universe before coming to Earth, perhaps on an asteroid;
The Kepler mission - this mission uses a space telescope to look for Earth-like planets and was launched in March 2009;
The Drake equation - can we predict whether there are other civilisations out there using maths?
You can participate in the search for extraterrestrial life in the SETI@home project. In 1995, David Gedye proposed analysing radio signals from space using a virtual supercomputer composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers - this is known these days as grid computing. The idea is to use the combination of many networked computers rather than a single supercomputer, and because of the vastness of space, the width of the electromagnetic spectrum and the fine resolution required, there is an awful lot of data to analyse! You can download the software needed at the SETI@home homepage.
Tune in to the podcast here (or press play below):
Ever wondered whether it is scientifically possible to become a superhero?
In a new series of podcasts, Dr Christopher Pettigrew (aka Dr Boob*) and I are going to tackle this question. Chris is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Biochemistry in University College Cork, and in these podcast episodes - which we will publish more than a few times a year - we will uncover whether it is possible now to possess the powers of superheroes, and if we can't, whether in the near future we could engineer ourselves to become superheroes.
The first superhero we are tackling is Mystiquefrom X-Men. X-men get their powers from an "X gene" that normal humans do not possess, and Mystique is a shapeshifter who naturally looks blue. Actress Rebecca Romijn portrayed Mystique in the X-Men films - I know I clearly remember the blue body-paint...
Mystique has a number of powers including:
The ability to change skin colour;
The ability to shape-shift - that is, change form;
She can impersonate other voices;
She can rapidly grow her hair.
Within nature, chameleons are able to change their skin colour to match their environment. There are also technologies under current development, such as metamaterials, that can be used to make something look invisible. Through a combination of genetic manipulation to activate melanocytes (and possibly chromatophores), and the use of surface coatings, it is not unforeseeable that we could develop human chameleons. The difficulty here lies in whether we can make a skin colour change a conscious decision - how can you wire up the body such that skin colour responds your thoughts?
The challenge of being able to impersonate another person's voice should be easy enough to conquer in the near future through a combination of electronics and simple mimicry. It is also possible to foresee rapid hair growth - this could be accomplished by rapid protein synthesis, such as in spider webs.
The biggest difficulty comes with the shape-shifting - how can one change their 3D shape?
Tune in to the podcast here (or press play below) to discover what scientific techniques we came up with to tackle the problem of scientifically engineering Mystique:
A few extra notes to explain some of the random comments in the show:
Let us know your thoughts on how we could scientifically engineer Mystique. We rated this a 7.5 out of 10 possibly for the next 200 years - if someone really wanted to, notwithstanding the ethical concerns along the way.
Also let us know which superheroes you would be interested in us tackling.
* From here on in, Chris will be referred to as Dr Boob - this nickname stems from the fact that Chris's PhD and some of his post-doctoral work has been into the study of breast cancer - yes, someone who is actually changing the world!
A friend of mine recently pointed me in the direction of an article in signonsandiego.com called With Obama election comes the return of the vampire. This article puts forward the theory that more vampire movies come out when Democrats are elected to the US Presidency, and more zombie movies come out when the Republicans are in office.
Recent evidence of this is the new Twilight vampire flick - coinciding with the election of Democrat Obama - and the spate of zombie films during George W. Bush's presidency - for example 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later and Dawn of the Dead. The original article looks back in time at various presidencies and it makes compelling reading.
What is the reason behind this (if there really is one)? One argument put forward is that the movies depict what we fear at the time. Democrats, who believe in redistributing wealth among the people, fear the Wall Street vampires who bleed the nation dry. Vampires, such as Dracula, represent the aristocracy. Republicans fear a revolt of the poor and disenfranchised, and as such fear zombies.
But, is there any truth to this argument? Let's turn to the data. The easiest way to determine the number of vampire and zombie films which have come out over the last 50 years is to look at The Internet Movie Database. Using its power search, I was able to find the number of movies (not TV-movies , TV-shows or direct-to-video movies, but only big screen movies - imagine trying to quantify every TV-show ever made, not even imdb is that complete) made each year in the US since 1953 (a seemingly good point to start this analysis as there is plenty of data about the movies made in this time - it's also the presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower), as well as the number of movies tagged "vampire" and "zombie". You can see this data in the following table, where the year is the starting year of the presidency:
We've plotted the number of zombie and vampire films produced as a percentage of all films produced that presidential term in the US: A stand out result is the large number of zombie films made in the 1980s under Reagan. It seems clear that zombie films peak in Republican years, but it is less clear whether vampire films have similar peaks under Democrats.
Indeed, the average percentage of movies that are zombie-themed produced during a Democratic presidency is 0.372%, whilst under the Republicans it is 0.571% - this is a large difference. The average percentage of movies that are vampire-themed produced during a Democratic presidency is 0.544%, whilst under the Republicans it is 0.491% - the percentage moves in the direction of our theory, but not by much.
Using a single-tailed Student's t-test (named after its inventor William Sealy Gosset, whose nom de plume was Student - I thought at school that it was named this because it was used by students, anyway...) to test between the null-hypothesis that the governing party makes no difference to the types of movies made and the theories that zombie movies go up under Republicans and vampire movies under Democrats, we find the t-statistic for the zombie case to be -1.69 which gives a p-value 5.7%. What this means is that there is a 5.7% chance that there is no significant difference between the zombie results under Democrats and Republicans. This is very close to the 5% level most statisticians accept for significance, and as such is a very intriguing result.
For the vampire case, our p-value is 33% and so there is little chance of significance. Both tests could be improved with more data (what every statistician needs!)
In summary, there just might be something in this (for the zombies anyway.) There is an almost significant difference between the percentage of zombie movies made under Democrats and Republicans. To predict the next election, it could well be worth looking at how many zombie movies are planned for the inauguration year and the 3 years after it. As most movies are planned more than a year ahead of time, this could be an interesting election predictor.
I guess we now know where George W. Bush's brains went! Brains.....
As it's Halloween, here is the Halloween news that I presented on Diffusion Science Radio this week. Diffusion can be heard on Monday nights at 6.30pm on 2SER 107.3 in Sydney, at various times across Australia on stations affiliated with the Community Radio Network, and on the Diffusion podcast.
1) Halloween, Candy and Science
What's worse: eating all the lollies collected on Halloween night at once, or spreading this out over the coming days and months?
When it comes to your teeth at least, it is far worse to ration your lollies all through the day, day after day than it is to gorge it all at once. Mark Helpin, a pediatric dentist at Temple University, says that snacking on candy keeps your teeth bathed in enamel-corroding acid, which is produced by bacteria feeding on the sugar in your mouth.
When you cover your teeth with sugar, oral bacteria cause a rise in acidity levels. This is neutralised when you brush your teeth. Even if you don't brush, saliva will eventually wash away the sugar and starve the bacteria. If you continually snake on chocolate and other lollies, the level of acidity stays constantly high, and this can lead to tooth decay.
Helpin also thinks that potato chips are just as bad, or worse, than lollies. Acid-producing bacteria feed on carbohydrates in potatoes, which are far more sticky than lollies and so hang around longer on your teeth. This poses an even greater risk for tooth-decay.
There's been a recent downturn in the fortunes of those hunting for Bigfoot, which a supposed frozen corpse of the animal turning out to be a Halloween costume.
SearchingforBigfoot.com owner Tom Biscardi had paid an estimate $50,000 to Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer for their frozen Bigfoot "corpse". Biscardi also hired Sasquatch detective Steve Kulls to check out the specimen.
Kulls was not a happy man, and neither, it turns out was Biscardi, especially after Whitton and Dyer ran off with his money.
"I extracted some [hair] from the alleged corpse and examined it and had some concerns," Kulls writes. "We burned said sample and said hair sample melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair. Within one hour we were able to see the partially exposed head. I was able to feel that it seemed mostly firm, but unusually hollow in one small section. This was yet another ominous sign."
"Within the next hour of thaw, a break appeared up near the feet area. ... I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot."
When Biscardi found out, he called Whitton and Dyer at their California hotel, who confirmed the hoax. However, when Biscardi went to look for them, they had disappeared with his money, and plenty of his dignity.
A population of vampire moths has been found in Siberia that entomologists suggest may have evolved from a purely fruit-eating species as there are only slight differences in their wing patterns from the herbivorous cousins, Calyptra thalictri.
When the Russian moths were experimentally offered human hands , the insects drilled their hook-and-barb-lined tongues under the skin and sucked blood.
Entomologist Jennifer Zaspel from the University of Florida said the discovery could shed light on how indeed caught a fruit-eating moth evolving blood-feeding behavior, it could provide clues as to how some moths develop a taste for blood.
It may be that blood-feeding in insects evolved from feeding on tears, dung, and pus-filled wounds.
"We see a progression from nectar feeding and licking or lapping at fruit juices to different kinds of piercing behaviours of fruits and then finally culminating in this skin piercing and blood-feeding," she said.
In addition, only male moths exhibit blood-feeding, which means that maybe its so the males can pass on salt to females during sex. This could provide a nutritional boost to young larvae that have sodium-poor diets.
In the second of a two part series on zombies, this week we go deeper in the dark world of the undead. In part one we managed, through a combination of drugs, to create zombie-like creatures who were sluggish and largely brain-dead. This week we have a shot at recreating the zombies of films such as I am Legend - creatures created through the transmission of a virus, who are filled with rage and enjoy the taste of brains. Topics covered include:
